


Fresh Solace

by bTackt



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bTackt/pseuds/bTackt
Summary: Rasmus arrives at the TSM house just when being on TSM starts to get to Vincent. Vincent finds something in Rasmus nobody else seems to have.





	Fresh Solace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AeonWing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonWing/gifts).



The day Rasmus came to the TSM house, Vincent was on a vicious loss streak. As the enemy team pushed into their base for the ninth time that day, he was on full tilt.

“Vincent,” Parth gently tapped his shoulder. “MrRallez is here, can you come say hi?”

“Okay, be there in a minute.” He checked the damage graph (depressing), closed League of Legends, and put down his headphones. He spun his chair around and looked at the empty room. Funny how upright and ordered everything was, as normal, and how tilted he could be, stuck inside his own screen. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to shake off the feeling.

In the foyer, everyone was welcoming the new substitute. Peter had told Vincent that, to be completely honest, he was open to learning whatever MrRallez had to teach him, but he didn’t believe there was much he could be taught. Vincent himself hadn’t heard much of him before; he knew that he had started in the EULCS previously, but didn’t know much about him otherwise.

When he finally got to Rasmus and shook his hand, he found himself staring upwards. He had seen photos of him before, but they hadn’t warned him that Rasmus was devilishly tall. “Welcome,” he managed. “Glad to have you.”

“Thanks,” Rasmus replied. “Excited to be here.” He spoke with an accent, solidly, directly.

“Are you Danish too?” Vincent asked. The accent danced against his ear.

Soren threw his arms around Vincent’s shoulders. Vincent jumped. “Of course, Vincent,” he interjected. “Didn’t you read on reddit about my _secret_ plot to replace everyone on TSM with Danish imports? Didn’t you?” He ruffled Vincent’s hair. Vincent shook him off and calmly repositioned his hair. It annoyed him, but he knew Soren was just trying to have fun.

“This is my support, Biodaddy,” Peter pulled Vincent back in front of MrRallez. “We can share him sometimes, I guess,” he laughed. “I’m just joking, just joking,” he protested, when Vincent put on a pouty face.

“Please don’t call me that, MrRallez,” he raised his eyebrows.

“I’ll call you Vincent, if that’s alright. Call me Rasmus.”

\--

That evening, Rasmus was the second to last to finish dinner, and Vincent was last. In fact, he didn’t even finish dinner. He just didn’t feel like eating, he didn’t know why. Rasmus got up.

“Do you put the dishes in the sink, or just leave them here?”

Vincent looked up with tired eyes. “Put them in the sink. We take turns doing dishes.”

“Hey, Vincent, are you okay? Are you always like this?”

Vincent looked down again and poked at his food.

“Why don’t you eat?” Vincent still didn’t respond, so Rasmus just went up to his room. Vincent seemed like a shy person from what he had seen of TSM before, so maybe he just wasn’t talkative. And didn’t eat much...that part was strange, but he was kind of skinny.

As he tucked in for the night, he remembered again that he was in America, and he was on TSM. _TSM!_ He would get to play with Doublelift, the legend, and learn from him. It was any western player’s dream, and he was the lucky one.

\--

For the next week of practice, MrRallez got to play nearly a third of the scrims while Doublelift looked on. The postgame discussions were interesting, since Peter had very different things to discuss than usual, but what was even more interesting to Vincent was playing in lane with Rasmus. He had only ever played with Peter at the pro level, and he was pleased to find out that MrRallez’s style was different. He wasn’t quite as good as Peter at teamfighting and positioning, but he was always thinking a couple steps ahead. Not just in lane, as everyone has to, to try and see ahead what trades they could make, but also for the entire game. Rasmus didn’t speak much, but when he did, it was almost prophetic; he could see into the future. If Dennis said that the jungle was top side, Rasmus would calmly say that they needed vision of dragon, and to play defensively at mid. And he might take some aggressive trades if he knew Vincent could sustain for them. And once he had forced the enemy bot lane back to base, he would call for vision at Rift Herald and Dennis would call for the dragon. And the jungler would show up to the baron pit a minute later, only to clear vision. It seemed like Rasmus could see the broad picture of what would happen in the game five minutes before it happened--he was rarely wrong, but sometimes his mechanical abilities held him back from winning critical fights. He wasn’t bad, but Peter was just better.

Vincent appreciated him. It seemed like he was very humble and softspoken, and maybe he would really learn from Peter how to practice in order to sharpen his mechanical. In post scrims, he listened more and talked less. Even when something concerned him, Parth often had to ask him for his input. He was very different from Peter, who seemed a little bit jealous and frustrated at times that Rasmus was given so many official scrim blocks, or even Soren, who seemed to listen to Peter but discredit what Rasmus said, to a degree. It reminded Vincent of when he first arrived at TSM a year ago, intimidated and quiet. He barely said anything in team discussions, but eventually he was coaxed out of his shell and now spoke his part after every game. He figured Rasmus would eventually learn to say more, but it didn’t seem like he was nervous around Bjerg and Double, as Vincent had been.

\--

The evening before evening after dinner, Vincent asked Rasmus to duo with him. He wasn’t feeling the challenger soloqueue and he wanted to try Rasmus in a casual game. It had been a bad week for him, making quite a few mistakes in scrims. Everyone told him mistakes were okay, he would learn from them and that’s what would make them better. But he knew he was performing too poorly; he was holding the rest of the team back from good practice. He didn’t want to think about it.

He queued up with Rasmus and got into game as Jhin/Nami. Jhin was so off-meta that they were pushed in for the entire laning phase, but their poke was good enough that Rasmus kept up in CS. But once they got into mid game, something clicked on. Jhin was supposed to be weak, and they were so behind, but Rasmus wouldn’t stop getting kills. They kept winning teamfights over and over again. At one point he was off splitpushing by himself and the enemy team sent four to stop him, but he made it back to his tower somehow and turned three kills back before dying. Vincent couldn’t believe it. Rasmus was actually nuts. Soloqueue made him a whole different player. He felt like laughing again.

After Vincent washed up for the night, he was ready to tuck in when he noticed Rasmus’ door open. He had the misfortune of rooming with Dennis, the loudest snorer, but Rasmus was too polite to complain or even comment.

Vincent slipped in. “Can I come in for a second?”

“Oh, sure, sure. Of course,” Rasmus said. He was reading a book.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing,” he said, putting the book down on the nightstand. “Just some recreational reading.” Vincent smiled. “What, you don’t read books all the time?”

Vincent looked at him for a second, and then realized he was memeing. He laughed. “No, no, I don’t.” He paused. “Hey, Rasmus, thanks for duoing tonight. It was fun.”

“I could tell. You haven’t laughed like that all week since I arrived.”

“It’s because I’m doing crappy in scrims. Can’t you tell, I’ve just been missing skillshots, my vision numbers have been down, I’ve missed so many engages--”

“I couldn’t tell; I thought you were just bad.”

Vincent’s gaze snapped up to Rasmus’ eyes. They twinkled. He was memeing again. He sighed, shaking his head. “You’re actually a troll!”

“What did you think I was, quiet?” Rasmus shot right back. Vincent couldn’t help but smile. He was so funny.

“Hey, maybe we can talk more often. It’s kind of…” Vincent shrugged his shoulders. “..relaxing to talk to you. Thanks.” And he ducked back out before Rasmus could say anything else.

Lying in bed, Vincent couldn’t fall asleep again. He knew he should play with blue light off, but every time he didn’t, he paid the price by suffering an hour of sleeplessness. An hour to think about himself and his world around him.

Rasmus was relaxing to talk to. He was polite, and he was nice. A gentle giant. He thought he just didn’t say much, but it turned out when he did talk he was incredibly funny. And it wasn’t like the stuff that spewed out of Peter’s mouth all the time, making him roll his eyes and grumble; Rasmus made him roll his eyes and laugh. And Kevin just worked so hard; he was always talking about how much League he had played that day, or what he had accomplished at the gym, and it drove Vincent crazy. He understood why Kevin was proud of his hard work, but it made him feel like he wasn’t doing good enough to be in the group, and he had to work harder to try to do as much as Kevin, although he knew he never could. Same with Bjerg, but he worked even harder, and said less, and was overall more scary. He hugged Soren, and laughed, and ate dinner with him, but he still felt so inferior. And Dennis...everyone seemed to like Dennis. Everyone liked him too, but only to tease him and meme him. They seemed to genuinely like Dennis.

He realized he had been trying for an entire year to fit into a group of people not like him. He did what he was told, but was still scared of his teammates. Every day was spent trying to impress them, because he felt like he didn’t deserve to be in this team if he didn’t measure up to the rest of them. Rasmus’ arrival had made him realize he hadn’t been acting like himself. He had been acting out of fear and jealousy, and in a way he thought that was like everyone else, so that he could fit in. Rasmus was the first person he wasn’t scared of. He liked him. And not because he had to.

LCS was tomorrow. He could wake up pretty late, but to wake up, he had to fall asleep first. He drifted off, smiling.

\--

Rasmus got up on time the next day, eight o’clock as usual. As he watched the team play on stage that day, he tried to watch with a critical eye so that he could offer feedback between the games. The team seemed to be working together well; although it did seem like Bjergsen and Doublelift dominated comms so much there was barely room for anything else. Hauntzer seemed a little disconnected off on his own, and Sven played normal; solid but not outstanding. Biofrost did his job, with a minimal amount of communication, but he seemed happier than he had all week.

His first impression of Vincent was a shy type of boy, but he was thinking there might be more than he had first imagined. He felt most connected to Vincent out of everyone because he seemed similar to himself; he kept to himself and seemed to think a lot to himself. It seemed like whenever he interacted with other people, he did so because he had to, but he seemed to prefer being alone.

On Sunday, Rasmus woke up at the same time, but as he headed downstairs, he heard someone singing. Someone else was up just as early as him. He followed the sound to the bathroom door, where it sounded like someone was showering. The voice was singing an American pop song that he recognized but didn’t know the name of. It was so clear and diamond-like...it sounded like Vincent. _Voice of an angel,_ he thought. It was so pretty. He listened for another minute before he decided standing outside the bathroom door was kind of weird.

Rasmus played soloqueue until it was time to leave for the last day of the weekend at LCS. The team had won the first game of the series, and had pressure to take the second game and close out the 2-0 weekend when Rakan engaged on them at mid and the enemy took baron to close out the game. The last game was bad from the start. Hauntzer was ganked over and over again top, Bjergsen could not secure a meaningfully large lead over his lane opponent, and bot lane was shoved in so hard for the whole laning phase that it actually ended up in a tower taken just by being pushed over and over again. They managed to stall until late game, but the early deficits proved to be too much for them to fight back from.

After the match, everyone seemed pretty dejected. The second game had been within reach, and to be smashed so hard afterwards felt pretty bad. A little bit of blame got thrown around backstage, but Rasmus didn’t say anything. He knew what had happened that third game, but he had to earn everyone’s respect and trust first before he could help tell them what went wrong.

\--

That night, Vincent knocked on Rasmus’ door.

“Hey,” Rasmus said. “What’s up?”

“Do you have a minute? Can I talk to you?”

“Of course. Come in.”

“It’s just that I had a bad day, and I need somebody to talk to. You’re the only one I feel comfortable with. Like, venting, I mean, I guess.”

“Oh?” Rasmus was surprised. He had only been here for a week, and he figured Vincent would want to talk to Peter or someone. Maybe he _had_ already earned someone’s trust. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, Rasmus. I just...I feel so bad that we lost today. Everyone blamed it on my Taric and it just makes me feel so hopeless…that maybe I’m not good enough to be on this team. What if I get kicked off?”

Rasmus thought for a moment. Vincent’s play in the third game had actually been the reason they had failed to stave off the pressure, but he didn’t know whether to worsen the truth or tell a lie.

“Well,” he started, “maybe everyone is just using you as a scapegoat. Losing is a team thing, you know. It’s not all your fault.”

“Reddit is flaming me too.”

“Aw, don’t read reddit. What do they know about League of Legends.” He patted the bed beside him. “Sit down.”

Vincent hesitated, then did so. He buried his face in his hands. Rasmus didn’t know what to say. He felt kind of awkward that Vincent was coming to him when he was sad, when Rasmus was still so new to the team. He didn’t want to sound like he was lecturing, but he wanted to comfort him somehow.

Suddenly, he heard sobbing. He stared at Vincent crying into his hands, petrified. He didn’t know what to do. Tentatively, he slowly put his arms around Vincent in a hug. He was so small that Rasmus almost engulfed him in his embrace.

In response, Vincent cried, “it’s my fault, isn’t it. I try and try, but my vision game isn’t improving, and that’s why we lose pressure and lose the game, isn’t it. Isn’t it?” Rasmus didn’t say anything. “You hesitated. It’s true, it’s true…” Vincent kept sobbing.

“Shh, shh…” Rasmus was scrambling for what to say. “Vincent, even if your warding is not the best, it doesn’t have to be that way forever. You work so hard I’m sure it will get better.” His shirt was getting damp with Vincent’s tears. He picked him up and wiped his face off with a tissue, then turned Vincent’s head to look him in the eyes. “Vincent, it’s going to be okay. I’ll help you practice, okay? We’ll make you better together. Don’t cry, please.”

“Okay,” Vincent said, drying his cheeks. He laughed a little. “I’m so sorry, I’m embarrassed I cried like that in front of you. It’s just that...nobody else in this house is as nice as you. I’m so scared that anybody else will just laugh in my face and send me off without a sensitive word to say.”

“Vincent, you can always talk to me. We’re friends, okay? Don’t worry about crying.”

Vincent laughed again. “Don’t remind me I just did that in front of you. Thank you.” And he leaned into Rasmus to hug him again. “You give such good hugs.” They sat there for a minute before Vincent pulled away and stood up to leave.

“I’ve got to go to bed,” he said.

“You know, the other day, I heard you singing in the shower. You’re so good,” Rasmus said.

“You heard that? Oh my god, why!??”

“No, it was really good, really. You should do something with that.”

“You know the other guys just meme me for singing; I like to sing, but I hate getting made fun of.”

“Just accept the compliment,” Rasmus smiled.

Vincent blushed. “Okay, thank you. And now, good night.”

“Good night, Vincent.”

\--

Epilogue

Rasmus and Vincent spent more time together in the weeks following, practicing together and helping each other improve. TSM saw an upswing towards the end of the season and eventually took the championship in TD Garden.

Rasmus eventually adjusted to the TSM environment. Vincent was right about the domineering personalities of Peter and Soren, but Rasmus knew how to stay true to himself. He still liked to spend time with Vincent the most, and sometimes stayed up way too late chatting with him.

Vincent opened up to Rasmus, finding a true friend and emotionally supportive teammate in him. He was also a very good cuddler.

That offseason, they went different ways, but each of them would tell you that they other had truly changed him for good.

**Author's Note:**

> This was definitely not gay enough or nsfw enough for you Mark :'(


End file.
